1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to document imaging and processing and more particularly to systems and methods for digitizing documents and storing and accessing the same.
2. Background of the Invention
Even with the widespread use of computers in business and in daily life, the use of paper-based documents to record, communicate and store information remains exceedingly popular. Although software applications offer new and improved functions such as character recognition, managed document archival and retrieval and specialized image processing, many businesses can not leverage these capabilities because they maintain a significant amount of information in paper form rather than electronically.
Various other drawbacks are associated with business processes that involve storing large amounts of information in paper form as opposed to maintaining such information electronically. For example, pages can easily be lost or misplaced, large physical spaces may be required for storing the documents, and information may not be readily accessed through search applications which are available for electronically stored information.
In some contexts, even though information was originally created and stored using paper documents, conversion to electronic format via digitization is required for one or more reasons. For example, in the case of litigation, it is often necessary to store, access, produce and analyze a large number of documents associated with the particular dispute. In most cases, the overall business process associated with converting physical documents in various formats into digital form is error prone, costly and time-consuming.
Various aspects of the overall task further complicate the process. For example, “paper-based” documents really represent many forms of physically stored information. This includes formats such as paper, microfilm and microfiche as well as other formats. Each of these formats generally requires its own, separate scanning device. Because of this, boxes of documents must be separated and fed into different scanning devices thus giving rise to the possibility that documents could be misplaced and/or the original document ordering could be lost.
Difficulties in maintaining document integrity and the original ordering also arise during other steps in the digitization business process. Boxes of documents and/or individual documents may be lost or caused to be out of order during pickup and/or transportation from the place where the documents are stored to the place where the documents are to be scanned. With typical digitization business processes, documents can also be lost or caused to be out of order during the time they reside at the scanning location and/or during the scanning process itself.
Yet another problem associated with typical document imaging business processes arises out of the fact that both human and machine error may manifest themselves during the process of scanning of physical documents. As a result, physical documents to be scanned can be lost, never scanned, scanned out or order and/or improperly scanned. Because of this problem it is generally not possible to validate the integrity of the scanned documents, their contents or their ordering. The inability to validate sets of imaged documents to a particular level of probability can, in turn, lead to situations in which the imaging process may not be applicable for a particular need.
For example, in the context of litigation, if document imaging was not originally done according to a process with a sufficient level of integrity verification, then difficulties may arise in connection with how a court treats the available evidentiary universe. Similarly, verification of document integrity can be a concern when documents are specifically imaged after the fact for the purposes of litigation. Imaging processes may also be unusable or suspect in other cases such as in the context of imaging, storing and cataloguing vital records such as birth certificates, passports as well as various other governmental and commercial vital records.
Document integrity in connection with an imaging process is of even more vital concern in the case where the source documents are destroyed following imaging. Often times, imaging is performed for the primary purpose of consolidating space and physical storage requirements. In this case, documents are typically destroyed or, at least, stored off-site in a relativly inaccessible form following digitization. In this case, electronic document integrity is even more critical since the source documents no longer exist or are difficult to retrieve.